From My Little Book: Your Dam Business

The hubbub was that the dam would be repaired after only one year of delay. Sure enough, come September 2018, the trucks and hoists and equipment arrived. Truthfully, the preparations began long before that, with an improved gravel service road being installed, and a good deal of concrete work above the waterline being completed.

Reworked section looking almost like new.

In September, the water did actually go down as low as the dam would allow.

Lots of mud.

Water level down more than 10 feet.

A mile and a half upstream, it was anticipated that my poorly designed dock would be high and dry and begging for reinforcement. But that was not the case. Though the water at the dam was drained down as low as it would go, what really regulates the winter level on Stewarts Landing is not the dam. The rapids above the dam are what actually determine the level. You’d think after about a thousand portages completed from one Adirondack lake to another, one would understand that principle without seeing the dam level all the way down, but some of us are a little slow on the uptake.

The natural rapids of Sprite Creek,
only visible when the level at the dam is much lower
than the usual winter level.

In fact, not only does the top of the rapids near the dam determine the water level upstream, but every little riffle adds to the height. Wherever there is flow that is impeded by the rocks in the stream, a small amount of height is added to the “bottom” as determined by the top of the rapids. A quarter-inch here and a half-inch there adds up. So the winter level of Lily Lake (and Canada Lake), where the channel widens and the flow is no longer impeded, is significantly higher than well downstream.

Riffles, small drops in the water level,
exist wherever the constricted flow passes obstacles,
and the channel is full of them.

Perhaps selfishly, some enjoyed the solitude provided by the early lowering of the water level. Less people means more wildlife. Those who paddle don’t need much depth to explore the channel. With warm September days providing ample opportunity to get out on the water, exploring the natural channel was a pleasure.

This female Merganser was enjoying the sun
on a rock that is usually far below the water's surface.

The assumption that the channel formed by the flow of Sprite Creek out of Lily Lake is the result of the dam is not correct. The channel has always been wide and deep enough for small boats to make their way from Canada Lake to a short distance above the location of the current dam. Verification is provided by the fact that unlike the surrounding dam-flooded areas, there are no stumps in the natural channel. Trees have never grown there.

No stumps here!

But there are logs. Hundreds of them. Visible under the surface, at the bottom of the channel lie sunken logs, artifacts of the logging industry that led to the settling of the area. Any ideas for creating something out of 100-year old sunken logs?

This bottom-hugging log is not a factor to boaters
when the dam raises the water to summer levels.

Another artifact is the remains of the wooden dam of the Stewarts Landing sawmill. The sawmill was on the creek, but the placement of what’s left of the dam makes one wonder if it had any effect at all on the water level above the rapids. Further investigation is necessary. A time machine and a drone would come in handy.

Remnants of the wooden dam across the channel.

100+ year old boards,
preserved by submersion.

The man-made jetty in the stream,
most likely for guiding logs to the mill.

The Stewarts Landing sawmill,
from the Fulton County Archives, by way of
Barbara McMartin's book Caroga.
(Well worth reading!)

Back to the current dam. Work continued through the autumn and was pretty much done before the usual blanket of snow covered the site.

Work in progress on the downstream side.

Before they were through, the workers extracted the gate which holds back the water and drives the level up for summer. Let’s hope it returns! But it is not only the thing determining the summer water level. There are boards installed across the top of the spillway which add their width to determining the level. These, too, were replaced while the work on the dam was in progress.